Steele dossier compiler constantly pressed his DOJ pal Bruce Ohr for favors and information valuable to Steele’s client Deripaska whom NY Times describes as so close to Putin that he’s been called ‘Putin’s oligarch.’ Steele flooded US State Dept. with “free” Russia info for years-Eric Felten, Wkly Standard, 9/14/2018

When asked by The Weekly Standard about Deripaska and the Steele-produced memos Winer shared with State, Winer had his attorney respond: “Mr. Winer did not provide information to anyone at the State Department at any time that was funded by, or related in any way to, Mr. Deripaska. Any statement to the contrary is false.”

The official says the Putinesque spin of the memos led them to take Steele’s analysis with more than a grain of salt: “There was a huge discount factor for that reason.”

This was the reputation Steele had at the upper reaches of State: Among the people who saw his work most frequently and who had the most expertise in Russian issues, the onetime MI6 officer was seen as “peddling information that was useful to the Kremlin.”

Which brings us back to Victoria Nuland. The taint that Steele’s work carried at State may explain why she ran as far and as fast as she could from Jonathan Winer when he showed up with a condensed version of Steele’s Trump dossier in September 2016. In an interview with Politico last February, Nuland says her reaction to the summary of Steele’s Trump-Russia allegations was that it was “not the business of the State Department.” Give the thing to the FBI, she said, which may have been the good-government response—and may also have been sensible hand-washing by one of the few people who were in a position to know what Steele’s Russia reporting was worth.”